


I Will be Happy

by foxghost



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Angst, Family, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-05
Updated: 2012-08-05
Packaged: 2017-11-11 11:32:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/478094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxghost/pseuds/foxghost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cypheroftyr prompted Fenris/Varania, "I would have given you everything."</p><p>It got out of hand. It's now as much as bout Hawke and Anders as much as Fenris and not so much about Varania.</p><p>You can see it as a coming of age story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Will be Happy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cypheroftyr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cypheroftyr/gifts).



_I will be happy, when I am truly free of Danarius._

Three years on the run, bounty hunters at his heels every step of the way; the skills he acquired as a bodyguard along with the instincts he earned, having forgotten how he learned them, served his escape well.

As his companions - and it was strange to think of them as friends but he surmised that was what they were to him now - browsed for new arms and armour in the market, Fenris shifted his weight from foot to foot.

Waiting.

Fenris never bought anything; he saw no need for it. What he had was serviceable, familiar; his leather armour moved with him, supple as his own skin, and the blade had a weight he used to best advantage.

The mage touched everything at the stall where they sold amulets and rings. But the mage generally touched everything, tactile fingers lingering on cloth, feathers, fur, and Hawke's skin after their skirmishes. They held a red stone now, turning it to catch and scatter rays of sunlight.

Fenris was not surprised that the next he saw the mage, the chain of that amulet caressed his collarbones, its dark patina drawing his gaze.

"It's a way to show affection. Hasn't anyone given you things before?" Hawke shrugged when he asked why.

Danarius gave Fenris his armour, and that was the only thing made for his own use.

He shook his head as causally as he could, as though he did not care one way or another whether someone considered him worth buying a gift for. And he saw no reason to _keep_ things; a slave with more only had more to lose, and possessions hardly changed his status.

It was hard to move on when everything you wanted could crumble, the same way an unmaintained mansion could crumble.

_I will be happy, when I have my revenge._

He had settled into the dilapidated mansion in hightown, though he could not bring himself to fix even the broken windows, to cover the jagged edges of glass with canvas and block off the holes with wood boards.

On stormy days, which were most days in high summer, hurricanes rolling in from the sea brought with it wind and salt and stinging rain, the mansion wailed and moaned with pain as it brought more chaos, and Fenris stayed in the cellars where there were no windows as he listened to the sound of heavy paintings crashing to the floors.

One stone tile at a time it went, and the entire ceiling of a few back rooms have caved in.

They were broken and he possessed no skills to fix it. Fenris knew only how to destroy; he had forgotten, along with the past, the ability to create or mend.

Furthermore, he couldn't see the point - he would not fix up the place just so his former master could claim it. All he had were wine bottles and a few books, nothing he loved at all, and if he had to pack up his things and leave on the morrow, he would take only his sword.

He killed Hadriana, in anger, in haste, breaking his word in front of friends and told their resident healer to his face that all mages should rot.

The mage had looked back at him with nothing but hurt, and for once had no retort. And as his gaze fell away, unwilling to meet Fenris' eyes, that sense of righteousness that enveloped his mind, his hand, his soul, ebbed away to become an abhorrent guilt.

It did not feel like a victory.

_I will be happy, when I reclaim my past._

Hawke indulged his friends often; favors, money, company - it was all the same to him since he had it in him to give. But this time, he turned Fenris down.

"There's no point trying to look for someone you don't even remember," Hawke drank more now, since his mother's death. Sometimes he outdrank Fenris during their weekly gathering. "You don't even know her. She might as well be a stranger."

"Maybe I'll remember something if I meet with her," Fenris insisted, taking the communal bottle they passed back and forth back into his hands. It was nearly empty.

"And maybe," Hawke worried at his bottom lip, staring at the bottle in Fenris' hand. "Maybe there are things locked in there that you wouldn't want to remember."

"I didn't ask for these markings, Hawke."

"I wonder," and Fenris glared back at him, daring him to say more, so Hawke did not.

He walked his friend of six years back home, and Anders, looking worried, helped him the rest of the way upstairs.

Fenris wondered if the mage was happy now that he had Hawke. Another thing that Anders had that Fenris did not.

Love.

Anders only looked worried, and the sigh he gave as he took Hawke from Fenris was resigned.

_I will be happy, when I finally have family again._

He imagined a loving sister running into his arms as soon as he pushed open the door to the Hanged Man. Though maybe that was just his mind juxtaposing a fantasy of Hawke's sister for his own, making her as affectionate as Bethany towards her own brother.

Then it had all gone wrong, so very wrong, and everything as always seemed inevitable. Danarius poisoned his life, even his only living kin.

His only connection with his past a traitous snake of a mage.

"I would have given you everything," he gritted out, rearing back for momentum to strike her heart.

And what had he to give? A rotting mansion he did not own, empty wine bottles and a handful of gold saved up over hollow years.

Hawke was right. She was nothing but a stranger. He had been chasing after ghosts, and all they gave him were memories that made it harder to move forward.

He was his own man a day ago, and now he was a man who gave his own identity away.

"You sacrificed yourself to save your family," Anders said, while healing a gash on his arm.

Another day on the Wounded Coast, another skirmish, another small bag of coins to keep for food and games and wine for drinking with a friend.

"I gave my memories away to save a mage," and it came out harsher and more bitter than he intended, as though Anders had cause this slight and this pain. "A mage who decided that becoming a magister was more important than her own brother."

There was no one to blame save his past self and that foolish boy was as dead as Danarius.

"I know," Anders said distantly, more to himself than to Fenris, "that you don't believe in second chances or good intentions, but what you've done, saving your family; that act was just."

A demon agreed with his decision and it was supposed to make him feel better? Fenris snorted back a laugh.

Varania moved to the alienage, taking up her old trade out of a mudbrick house across from Merrill's home. Fenris had never visited the alienage, not even when Hawke came to fetch the bloodmage for his jobs.

He did not belong there. He belonged nowhere at all.

At best he felt at home in a run-down mansion in hightown, where the stone walls with their dwarven masonry, centuries old, gave his life a sense of permanency.

"You could at least visit, you know," Hawke was meddling again, as he meddled in each of their broken lives, having none of his own. "You can see your sister while I call on that deadbeat uncle of mine."

"I don't know her, Hawke."

"Do you remember what you said, at the Hanged Man?" At the shake of Fenris' head he continued. "You said you would have given her everything. Well, you already did. You once gave everything up so she could be free."

"And she still betrayed me," his voice was low and menacing, though he never learend to be otherwise. Even that was a skill.

"She never had a choice in the matter, Fenris. Do you think they would have let her walk away if she said no? As far as she's concerned her brother died when he got those markings. It's like," Hawke gestured with his hands, trying to convey the enormity of death, "if Bethany was made Tranquil. She wouldn't be the same person anymore."

"And what does that say about me, exactly?"

"All I'm saying is that you loved her once. Enough to give your life for her, and," Hawke slunped back into a creaking winged chair with the worn velvet and exposed frame. "I'm not optimistic enough to say that you'll get along, but you cared about someone more than yourself once. And it's worth the trouble to reclaim that, if not your sister."

"You've giving me life advice now?" Fenris said with mockery plain, "what, are you happy with your life?"

They were rash, angry words, and he wished he could take them back. Hawke was lonely, as they were each lonely in their struggles, but Hawke had lost the most, worked the hardest, and gained the least.

And Anders was never home anymore. In the evenings when Fenris helped Hawke home drunk, Bodhan was the one who took his friend away from the door.

"No," Hawke mouthed, and then he smiled, broken and wry. If his friend had began to cry it would have been easier to look at than that smile. "But that doesn't mean I should stop trying."

"And why do you do it?"

A pause, "it's a way to pass the time."

They drank in silence, the kind of camaraderie that came from six years of mellowed friendship that began as reliance on his friend's strength. Now that his burden - the vengeance, and the constant fear of being a hunted slave - was lifted, the weight was still there, and it was no longer a monster he could fight.

But it was a reminder. He was ready to give her everything he had, though that amounted to nothing. Nothing he cared about.

"Do you remember when I asked you why you gave Anders a gift?"

"No," Hawke wrinkled his nose, laughed, and shook his head. "I forget _nothing._ That was years and years ago."

"You said gifts are a way to show affection."

"I did. But," they were both drunk now, and stuttering, "you know, taking is a way to show affection too. Taking with grace ... treasuring the things you're given."

A Sword of Mercy leaned on one side of his fire place, sitting dangerously close to the fire. A book, well thumbed through and unread, languished precariously on a three-legged table by his bed.

"I haven't been a very good friend," Fenris said with the light of sudden realization.

"Hah!" Hawke's laughter rang loudly, through the holes in his roof. Half of hightown probably heard him. "You've saved my life. I've saved yours. You're a great friend, Fenris."

It was strange; the decay in every alienage; the elves looking down as they walked though it was the only place in Kirkwall where they were truly safe. They gave him a wide berth, fleeing at the sight of his skin, the brands, and his sword.

Varania saw him coming from across the street and she did not flee, though he had given her every reason to. She folded the fabric in her hands, a sheet of sage coloured silk, making him wonder as to the work she was doing. Was she tailoring for hightown nobles? It had been months since her arrival in Kirkwall, no friends, no family, and yet she had carved a path for herself.

"Leto," she said, and it felt almost familiar. He had months to picture the sound of that name, patching together scattered memories to form a flawed whole.

"How are you settling in?" Fenris fidgeted, and his sister's eyes followed his hands hopefully, looking for a sign, perhaps, of her brother.

Small talk was never his strong point. If words were not important, he kept silent. Leto might have been different. Fenris would not have known.

"Your friends have been helping me," her gaze fell on Merrill's door, fondly, before drifting back to him. "It's ... different. Better than Tevinter."

"Do you feel safe here? There are a lot of templars in Kirkwall."

"I am not made of glass," then he saw her smile for the first time.

Fenris felt his eyes widen as though he had seen the sun rise.

He remembered how embittered she seemed the last time they met, and wondered if his friends had convinced her to meet with him the way they had worn down Fenris with words and wine.

She shifted her weight from foot to foot, a swish of silk deftly transfered to a work table, and when she looked up her tilt of the chin and the closed mouth smile was the same as his own.

Then she pursed her lips, and shook her head, because she knew him and knew how long it took him to talk to someone, even if it was the sister he never met. Perhaps harder still because it was her, and not just anyone else he cared nothing about.

"You said you wanted to know about the past, in your letters."

"I did," he braced his back on the side of the small stall. Some other elvhen woman used to work this stall; he watched her die not ten paces from where he stood.

It was not safe here. Perhaps he should visit more often.

"If you want you can stay for dinner."

He froze as though he could not believe how easy it could be, and part of him wanted to distrust the invitation, to run back and hide in the familar cobwebs and dusty halls, with sheets of rain pouring down the walls drowning out the chatter of rats.

There was too much at risk, his heart was at risk, the way it never had been.

Once he gave his everything to save his family.

Once, he placed aonther's life above his own, even if that person was a mage.

And if this warmth that threatened his apathy was anything to go by, he could be that person again.

Sometimes, affection was not about giving away things, and whether Leto cared about his own life or not, it mattered little now. There was only the present, the moment, a chance to open up to love and hurt.

 _It was something to pass the time_ and more, it was the only way to feel and make life bearable and not a chore, and if he failed and he faced pain and disillusionment again, Hawke would be there to remind him to keep trying, when he forget.

He had friends. He had family. And sometimes it was all right to take graciously, and treasure what he was given.

_I may be happy, if at last I give life a chance._

There were no more promised guarantees.

"I think I'd like that."


End file.
